African American news blog that features news that may get little or no coverage in the mainstream media

Monday, July 13, 2015

Hey conservatives, black people can deal with more than one issue at a time.

George L. Cook III

Hey conservatives, black people can deal with more than one issue at a time. By George L. Cook III

This post is written about conservatives regardless of race. I have read post by African American conservatives and heard them on radio doing some of the very things mentioned is this post, so don't try to make this a race issue. It's an ideological one.

During the recent debate over whether the Confederate Flag should fly near the South Carolina capital or anywhere on government property conservatives turned to their tried and true method of debate.

They brought up other issues that yes are more important, but that had nothing to with the debate over the Confederate Flag.

Suddenly when confronted with the fact that there was no good reason to fly the flag on government grounds conservatives started to point out black unemployment, black dropout rates and black murder statistics as red herrings.

The one thing you will notice is that these are things that conservatives don’t talk or pretend to care about these issues until there is an incident involving race.

They don’t bring these things up because they care, they bring them up to divert focus from the situation at hand. If they cared, these issues would be part of their platform on a consistent basis.

But what really bugs me is that they seem to think that focusing on one issue somehow means that African Americans can’t focus on other issues in our community.

If they did some actual research, they would learn that there are groups and individuals fighting against many of the ills that face the Black Community. Many of these groups and people get no publicity from liberal or conservative media, but they continue to fight every day to make things better in their communities.

Many issues of employment, education, incarceration, voting rights, and crime are important and being focused on individually. Of course, someone or a group focusing on one of these issues alone doesn’t help with the other issues. Of course, these issues may be more important than a damned flag but maybe that flag was the low-hanging fruit at the moment.

Maybe taking down that flag and claiming a victory can be the momentum changer to drawing attention to other issues and those that are addressing them.

But best believe these issues are being addressed and were being addressed long before conservatives pretended to give a damn. If you want to make the argument that in some situations things could be done better that would be honest but saying that these issues are not is simply being dishonest and telling an outright lie.